


Haven’t Finished Yet

by BewareTheIdes15



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assassins, Established Relationship, Fighting, Handcuffs, M/M, Rough Sex, Spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:27:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BewareTheIdes15/pseuds/BewareTheIdes15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thought makes Chris’ skin feel tight against his bones, the jarring surreality of the fact that he just B&E’d a Four Seasons with blood under his nails and a hitter for the competition chained to his wrist. A hitter he happens to be married to. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>A Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Haven’t Finished Yet

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into this particular fandom - naturally I decided to do it with ridiculous spy!AU porn. 
> 
> I did not include a warning for violence because I feel like it's about on par with the level of violence in the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but there is a physical fight between spouses contained herein, so if such issues are triggery for you, please don't read!
> 
> Special thanks to triedunture for the cheerleading and beta, even if it is her fault I discovered these bastards in the first place. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

"Happy endings are just stories that haven't finished yet." - Jane Smith, _Mr. & Mrs. Smith_

****

 

The hotel room door latches with a quiet _thunk_ that narrows the world down to the hammering of Chris’ pulse in his ears and the panting that he’s consciously slowing to a leak of air as he presses his ear up against the thick wood. The hallway outside’s still silent. No _ding_ of the elevator, no _shun_ of the stairwell door. No footsteps or ominous _cha-chack_ of magazines being loaded. No helicopters.

Not that there would be helicopters in the hallway. But outside. Outside there could be helicopters.

It’s really hard to think tactics with Zach breathing down his neck. Literally.

“I think we’re good,” Chris says finally, whispering anyway, because…well, because.

That earns him a sliver of space, another when he drops the dummy keycard – one day these places are going to start using something more sophisticated than a magnetic strip on a piece of plastic to open their doors and on that day Chris’ job is going to get harder - and steps further inside.

The sub-arctic blast of conditioned air that hits the sweat pricking his hairline and the blood smeared across his cheek makes him feel frosted. Not to mention way underdressed in his formerly favorite jeans - there are some ills that detergent alone cannot heal - and torn Yankees tee.

The room’s plush, all dark wood and charcoal brocade; big, meaningless shapes on canvas hanging over the crisply made bed. Good, unoccupied then. Thank heaven for small blessing and whatever the fuck. Chris isn't feeling especially blessed at the moment. Lucky to still be warm and breathing, sure, but that's not exactly the same. 

Zach trails along behind like Noah every time Chris has to be the one to take him on his walk. Not with _Zach_ , oh no, whenever _Zach_ walks him, the damn dog could compete in Westminster, but Chris puts a leash on him and it’s all dragging paws and howling and, you know what? Doesn’t even matter. If they don’t figure out something soon, ‘Aunt Zoe’ is going to be the one who has to drag a fluffy, forty pound parking brake around the neighborhood twice a day.

Rasping the curtains closed on the twinkling cityscape below, Chris says, "They’ll assume we’re getting the hell out of Dodge."

It's mostly for his own benefit, since Zach is, apparently, just as well versed in how this shit goes down as Chris is. Packing their bags and making a run for the border is exactly what they should do, but there’s no way they’re going to pull it off with both of their agencies scouring the streets for them. “So we’ve probably got a couple of hours before things cool down enough to make a move.”

 

“Hold still,” Zach hisses, ignoring Chris completely in favor of yanking him back by the wrist with a clatter of metal and the cool kiss of steel digging into bone.

 

His skin is rubbed-pink around the glinting circle of the handcuff. It makes Zach’s fingers feel hotter against the thin skin, thumb digging into Chris’ palm as he fishes a lockpick out of the breast pocket of what was – undoubtedly – a ludicrously expensive tuxedo before 90% of the left sleeve got ripped off by someone who shall remain nameless. There’s going to be hell to pay for that, Chris just knows it. But at the moment Zach’s too occupied trying to jimmy the lock on his half of the cuffs to wish Chris a fiery death with his - lightly singed - eyebrows.

 _His_ half of the cuffs, Chris notices. Not Chris’. And Zach tries to say that _Chris_ isn’t a team player. Like hell is this not coming up in their next therapy session.

Assuming they have another therapy session. Assuming they’re alive to.

Shit.

The thought makes Chris’ skin feel tight against his bones, the jarring surreality of the fact that he just B&E’d a Four Seasons with blood under his nails and a hitter for the competition chained to his wrist. A hitter he happens to be married to. Times like this he wishes he hadn’t been extensively trained to avoid annoying little emotional reactions like hyperventilation; seems like it’d be pretty damn cathartic about now.

“Here, I got this.” Chris’s voice sounds so flayed his hand actually fumbles in surprise when he makes a grab at the .32 stuffed into his waistband. He gets it out on the second try and flips the safety, presses the muzzle against the three-link chain joining their wrists and nearly plays connect-the-dots with the Baroque wallpaper when Zach pulls a genuinely tricky maneuver that sends the gun flying from Chris' hand and skidding across the floor while Zach backs him up into a nightstand.

“Are you insane or just stupid?” This time it’s a snarl, so close to Chris’ face that his lips are damp from Zach’s breath. “What part of don’t attract attention don’t you understand?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought we were trying to get out of these sometime this _year_.”

It’s second nature for Chris to hook a leg behind Zach’s, take him out at the knees. Just as much as it seems to be when Zach rolls into it, flips them in a way that, in any other situation, would leave Chris impressed – _how long has he known muay thai?_ – but now just makes him thankful that they’ve broken into a four-star joint or they’d have run into a wall by now.

Of course, thinking that means that he almost instantly ends up cracking his head against the leg of the desk, hard enough to match the thin line of pain where the cut across his cheekbone has split open again.

Zach looms over him, gel all fucked to hell so his hair’s hanging limp in his eyes, and commands, “Christopher, stop it.”

 

Like the dog. Treats him like the goddamn dog, and Chris is this close to picking a fight about it except Zach’s face is doing a thing under the streaky smudges of soot. A weird, spasm thing that reminds Chris of the time they went to that dinner party at the Bell’s and it turned out all those shrimp had gone bad.

“Oh my god, is your name even Christopher?”

Zach eases back until he’s seated more in the pan of Chris’ hips than on his stomach, free hand pressed to Chris’ chest through his tattered shirt. The one still cuffed to Chris flutters at his side, bumping constantly against Chris’ fingers like it can’t find a free space to settle. His eyes are doing that big-soft-wet thing that never fails to turn Chris into a puddle and, against all odds, that’s the most disorienting thing that’s happened to Chris all day.

There are no words for how far off the rails his life has slipped. Like, careening off one set of rails, skipping right over another, and swerving to a stop in the middle of a pile of manure, that's how far. Which would technically be words for how far, but semantics are not what matters at the moment. 

Two days ago he had a perfectly average secret-mercenary life in the burbs with his perfectly average husband and their perfectly average sexless marriage of convenience and now everything’s gone to pot. Somehow it feels like he should have anticipated it.

Chris jolts upright – not nearly as easy as it ought to be considering that Zach is supposedly a part-time yoga instructor – “ _What_? Yes my name is–" Stops himself when the subtext hits him like a hollow-point and comes back in with the volume cranked, “You didn’t give me your _real name_? Jesus Christ, we’ve been married for five years! What the hell, Z– Whoever you are!”

“Oh! Whereas you’ve been entirely forthcoming in this relationship?” Zach snaps back. Hauls himself up by the edge of the desk and gets a whole six inches before he visibly remembers he’s dragging Chris along by the fucking wrist. And then keeps walking.

The finely patterned carpet heats Chris’ knees through his jeans before he manages to lurch upright. Just long enough to shove at Zach’s shoulders, so instead of sitting on the end of the bed like he was moving to, he topples backward onto it. Not the best plan in the world, since all it does is drag Chris along for the ride, but it’s just starting to sink in the degree to which every moment of the single most intimate connection of his entire life has been a sham, so he thinks he’s allowed to act irrationally.

“At least you know what to call me, dickhead.”

The laugh that bursts out of Zach is bitter, stunted by the fact that he’s got Chris’ bodyweight pressing him down into the silky grey coverlet. “Dickhead? I’m so glad we’ve reached the mature part of the evening.”

All the air in Chris’ lungs squeezes out like the dregs of a tube of toothpaste with the force when Zach’s fist makes contact with his side.

Okay. That is it. It is on now.

His kidneys lurch where they may be permanently imbedded in his small intestine now when he rolls off of Zach and staggers to his feet, but it’s worth it for the look that gets wiped right off Zach’s face when Chris lays a left hook square across his jaw.

“You dress like a blind fourteen-year-old.”

There’s a moment where Chris really gets to savor the faint veil of pink slithering across Zach’s teeth before Zach clears away the trace of blood with a swipe of his tongue. He follows it up with that irritating little _tsk_ that he knows drives Chris right up the wall and then–

Alright, Chris should have been braced for that roll, Zach already proved he could do it. Still it’s a shock when the world spins and he suddenly finds himself facing the opposite direction. Thank fucking god for padded headboards, is all he can say. Mostly because Zach seems to have made it his mission tonight to make sure that Chris can’t get a breath, this time by way of a shoulder planted against Chris’ sternum.

It is at least moderately vindicating that he sounds like he’s straining to hold Chris there when he grinds out, “You didn’t gain ten pounds over Christmas, I just rigged the scales to screw with you.”

Wriggling isn’t one of those moves that shows up a lot in action movies because absolutely no one looks cool doing it. Chris learned a long time ago that the cool-looking way is generally worth fuck-all in real life.

“I ran out on our B&B weekend to take down an arms dealer in Melbourne,” Chris wheezes, twisting free to tumble to the mattress and getting a glancing elbow to Zach’s ribs in the process.

Zach’s on him again just as fast, pearl buttons digging into Chris’ spine through the thin barrier of his shirt. He manages to squirm over onto his side while Zach tries to pin his arms – not super effective considering that as goes Chris, so goes Zach’s left arm.

“I to–" Labored breath chuffs hot against the side of Chris’ face. “Wait, Bana?”

Blinks away the sting of sweat dripping in his eyes, Chris draws out a slightly wary, “Yeah.”

“Son of a bitch! I spent six months trying to get an angle on him!”

“Yeah.” A stupid grin crawls its way across Chris face at the memory of how pissed Bana looked when they finally hauled him in. He shrugs, sleeve rolling up his bicep from the friction against Zach’s chest. “Fruit imports. Who knew?”

Zach’s braced up on his arms, now – one hand dipping the mattress just beside Chris’ head, the one shackled to Chris’ spread out so their fingers overlap. The cuff is biting into Chris’ wrist like hell, but it’s got nothing on the sharpness in Zach’s eyes; roaming around Chris’ face like they’re trying to flush out a lie. Like they’ve never actually seen him before.

Chris’ clothes are sticking to him everywhere Zach’s touching him; a thigh pressed against his belly and another fit to the curve of his lower back, Zach’s ass perched lightly against his hip. Zach’s got to be baking in the remains of his tux, even with a couple of buttons missing so the frayed white shirt gapes open, exposing a deep V of chest hair and muscle that’s really not doing anything to help Chris’ temperature issue.

Every bit of it – the flush working down his throat, the glisten of sweat pasting a couple of wayward strands of hair to his forehead, the controlled heave of his chest like he’s worked up but pretending not to be, even the position, with Chris’ hips turned sideways and his shoulders pulled back to look at Zach straight on – it’s all just a shade too close to a completely different scenario for Chris not to be hard as nails against the fly of his jeans.

The spread of Zach’s legs doesn’t do much for the illusion that he’s the only one affected.

“I give the dog people-food when you’re not around.” He’s not even sure what makes him say it, there’s just this niggling worry at the back of his head that says scrapping it out would be better than this sudden influx of feelings. This clench in his chest like he needs a reminder that this is the same guy who’s been lying to him for the last half a decade. That this could all be an elaborate scheme on Zach’s part to take out Chris and get back into his agency’s good graces. That he doesn’t even know the real Zach so why the hell should he think anything that happened between them was more than a convenient cover and an occasional fuck. Very occasional, lately.

That every single thing one of those facts could be turned right back around on him too.

One of Zach’s eyebrows quirks up in response, but so does the corner of his mouth. “He still likes me better than you.”

Zach dips down with his hips, catching at Chris’ in a way that’s not actually suave, in the strictest definition of the word, but seems like it somehow because Chris didn’t intend to turn over onto his back and let Zach press down against him, but here they are.

“I went to Berkley. English major,” isn’t a taunt at all as it slides off his tongue, settling in the humid, rapidly disappearing space between them like fog. Vestigial at best, and completely spoiled by the hiccupping gasp he loses afterward, when Zach slides their legs against each other, presses himself in between Chris’.

“That makes a ridiculous amount of sense,” Zach smirks, almost wry except for how he’s lost the upper range of his voice so the words come out low and just a little rattled around the edges. He grinds down, slow, gritty cock-to-cock friction that gives Chris’ hands a life of their own; tangling with Zach’s fingers on one side, shoving up under his jacket to get at feverish, tacky skin on the other. “I trained to be an actor.”

The genuine laugh that startles out of Chris flies free with too much air and not enough sound. “Nicely done.”

Zach smiles, “Thanks,” like he’s taking the fact that he duped Chris for their entire relationship as a legitimate compliment. In all fairness, it kind of was.

His mouth is open against Chris’, just resting there, passing used oxygen back and forth like two-way CPR. His lips are damp and soft, the taste of dirty pennies creeping across Chris’ tongue when he swipes it out to wet his own. Their therapist would probably have plenty to say about the fact that Chris’ first thought is, _Fuck, you’re sexy when you’re bleeding._

“You’re the only guy I’ve ever slept with,” he whispers, and he can’t pretend it’s anything but a confession.

It takes a couple of seconds before that seems to register, the tip of Zach’s tongue playing around the shape of Chris’ canine tooth. Then all at once his head is jerking back, a veneer of authentic shock slapped over the fat spread of his pupils. “What?”

“Yeah, I don’t know.” Shrugging is a lot harder in this position, especially with his free arm straining to get a good grip on Zach’s ass. “Late bloomer, I guess.”

Zach’s body is still moving in jerky, infinitesimal fits and starts. It’s the same kind of thing he does after he gets off; his come slicked deep into Chris’ soft, hidden bits, but still working up into him like he can get just a little more, like he knows the show’s over but he just can’t bear to leave the theater.

He looks like Chris just accused him of eating live kittens, though.

“Jesus, will you stop with the face?” Chris rolls his eyes at the same time he does his hips, because apparently the hardon trying to split through the front of his jeans right now isn’t enough proof that he hasn’t just been feigning an interest in cock all this time. “It’s not like getting on your dick was a hardship, I’m just saying you’re the exception to my rule. I wouldn’t have married you if you weren’t.”

At least that knocks the stunned look off of Zach’s face, though the irritated one that slips in and takes its place isn’t necessarily better. Zach’s arm slipping under his body and getting a grip on his shoulder to pull him down into a punishing thrust definitely is. “I hate it when you do that.”

Chris loses his first attempt at a response on a moan, bucking up into the next push so his cock ruts viciously sweet against the thick line of Zach’s. His next comes out strained, smeared against Zach’s neck when he leans down to suck at Chris’ earlobe. “Tell you you’re good sex?”

“Say some saccharine rom-com drivel and mean it, so I can’t stay mad at you.” It’d sound more insulting if he wasn’t practically purring it against Chris’ skin. “People don’t really talk like that, you know.”

“Pretty sure people don’t really say ‘drivel’ either.”

That gets him a bite along the curve of his neck, one dirty thought shy of breaking the skin. Chris’ nerves fucking sizzle and he can’t even attempt to swallow the sharp, needy sound that jolts out of him.

He can’t remember how long it’s been since they fucked rough. Chris has always had a penchant for it; filthy, hard fucks on the kitchen floor or up against a wall, elbows and knees aching, lips swollen, marks from nails and teeth dotting his body for him to press against for days after and get worked up about all over again. The need of it, or maybe just the need in him, like if he didn’t pour every last ounce of himself into it he was going to burn away, shatter. It had seemed too risky, knowing his own physical capabilities when Zach couldn’t – well, when Zach _supposedly_ couldn’t – do anything to stop it if Chris went overboard.

His, “You owe me so much sex,” is more of a grunt, because he’s busy getting his sneakers braced against the bedspread to heave Zach off of him and onto his back.

Zach lands in a stunned sprawl, blinking wide-eyed when Chris crawls right after him. Mumbles, “Yeah, okay,” like he lost the plot and makes the hole down the center of Chris’ shirt from shimmying through the limo sunroof three times bigger with a hard tug of his fingers.

Chris has always sort of loved how fast Zach’s IQ drops with the introduction of friction to his dick. Just to prove the point, he braces his arms against Zach’s chest and presses his ass down against Zach’s crotch, gyrates a little, like a lapdance minus the skin and plus the fun when Zach’s hand flies to his hip and digs in hard enough to bruise.

Zach moans, showing off the long line of his throat to smolder at Chris through heavy eyes. “God, your fucking ass. I’d kill for some lube right now.”

Scratching too roughly through the springy hair on Zach’s chest in retaliation, Chris laughs, “You’d kill for ten bucks and a soy latte, don’t even lie.”

The grin that splits Zach’s face is diesel and matches, but he’s still panting through his mouth, lifting up into it every time Chris dips down. “You’re vastly underestimating my price point.”

Faster than Chris can compensate for, Zach wraps a hand around the handcuff chain and jerks. There’s the natural, stomach-churn moment when gravity decides to remind Chris who is whose bitch, and then he crashes into Zach’s chest, keeping all the important facial bones intact by sheer luck. Zach just looks pleased about it, razor-slice smile before he’s sinking his teeth into Chris’ lip.

His free hand is slipping down the back of Chris’ jeans - not a lot of room, but enough, because Chris makes a concerted effort to avoid having anything in his wardrobe that limits his range of motion - the pads of two fingers pressing tight to his hole and circling. Chris’ gut clenches, a blistering spike of want that has his body pushing back into Zach’s hand with zero go-ahead from his brain. The muscle flutters urgently under the touch and Zach hums, self-satisfied, around Chris’ tongue. Rubs harder until Chris’ voice shreds on a whimper.

It’s Zach whose breath hitches, even though Chris is the one with the very tip of one dry finger sliding into his ass. Zach whose eyes glaze and sharpen in turns as he presses in a little more, then draws back, pure gritty burn that makes Chris’ toes curl inside his shoes and his palms turn clammy with sweat.

“All that and kinky too,” he murmurs, almost reverent, as he nips at the slack shape of Chris’ mouth. Whatever he adds next is mauled into nonexistence by a long, dragging lick to Chris’ jawline, but there’s something that sounds suspiciously like ‘perfect’ mixed in there. Or maybe that’s just Chris’ wishful thinking.

It’s absurd how clawed up he feels by just this, grinding on a bed like high school kids; this nervy kind of desperation like a first date fuck, hoping like hell there’s going to be a second. He’s seen all of the mundane, everyday ugliness of Zach that there’s no way to blame on a cover - Hungover Zach and Got A Parking Ticket Zach and Still Can’t Remember Which Drawer We Keep The Spatulas In And Getting Really Pissed About It Zach. There’s about as much mystique there as there is between Chris and that freckle on the back of his hand.

Except that’s not really true at all, because now there’s all this new stuff, too; Can Tell Whether You’re Packing By The Way You Walk Zach and Will Not Hesitate To Break The Hands Of Limo Drivers Who Don’t Know When To Get The Fuck Out Of The Way Zach and Keeps Small Plastic Explosives On His Person For Emergencies Zach – Competently Wielding An AK-47 Zach recently rocketed to the top of the list of Chris’ favorites. All the same and all different, like an old monument with all the moss scraped off so the inscription’s finally legible. This alien, achingly familiar person whose skin he wants to bite his name into with stinging purple bruises just because he know Zach can take it.

And hey, Chris knows a good idea when he thinks one, so he doesn’t even try to fight the urge to tear at Zach’s shirt – more tiny pearly buttons popping loose to rub between their bodies like sand in an oyster shell - to get his mouth on the sleek angle of a collarbone.

Zach sucks in a break through his teeth at the first press of Chris’. Lets it out again on a growl as he jerks his hips up at the same time that he tugs Chris’ down like he plans on fucking Chris regardless of the lack of proper supplies and the fact that they’re both fully dressed. The fact that there are currently contracts out on both of their heads.

Chris chases that thought away with the salt of Zach’s skin, sinks another bite into the tender flesh of Zach’s throat and sucks until he knows there’s going to be a mark. If they’re going to their graves this tonight, Chris is going to do it knowing that some part of Zach will remembers it’s his.

So much for not thinking about that.

Arching like a drawn bow, Zach huffs, “Oh, fuck you, I didn’t want to come in these pants,” hollowed out and scraped raw.

Chris knows the feeling, _is_ the feeling, brand-hot ache all over like his skin’s been peeled back, leaving him one big, exposed nerve.

“Fuck _you_ ,” he says, just as juddery and strained as Zach. Throws in, because he knows what it’ll do, “I wanted you to come in my ass.”

And just like that Zach’s arms are clamping tight around him, enough rib-crushing strength to make up for the pitiful whine eking out of Zach’s chest. There’s too much fabric and heat separating them to feel the sticky spread of come, but Chris is trapped close enough that every lurch of Zach’s cock presses into his balls, a sympathetic hum of energy corkscrewing deep into his gut and coiling up protectively with the base of his spine caught between its jaws.

Like always, Zach keeps working his hips up even after the rest of his body has gone pliant. It’s a jolt to the system how much that does it for Chris, how much knowing that these details were authentic when everything else was a lie knocks him back harder than a drug.

It’s awkward to get his weight balanced on his chest so he can get a hand down to free his dick, particularly when his first aborted attempt draws his attention to how the fingers of his cuffed hand are twisted up with Zach’s like he’s going to get swept away by the tide if he doesn’t hang on.

He's a desert inside his own skin, superheated and dry-mouthed. Hotter still when short fingernail drag against his scalp, pulling a moan out of him like an ace up Zach's sleeve. Shivering, he fists himself, tacky skin catching, abrasive. Pushes through the flicker of impulse to back off by going harder instead until the shocky feeling melts into something sweet and hazy as fresh honey.

Every scrap of air he’s getting is heavy with the scent of spent gunpowder and the ghost of Zach's aftershave and sex. It rattles around wildly in his lungs, turning all the noises he can't quite hold back wet and craggy-edged.

Zach’s cheek is rubbing slick against Chris’, stinging where sweat gets into his open cut before Zach turns his mouth against it; a XXX version of kissing it better that hurts just as much as the punch that gave it to him in the first place, only this time the hit's from the inside of his chest.

The cross-grain rub of Zach’s stubble against Chris' seems gun-shot loud when he rasps, “Do it,” like a dare. All Chris hears is _show me you love me_.

From there it hardly takes anything at all.  A few more rough pulls, coarse palm and tight fingers and not enough slick, the slap of damp skin on skin lewd over the hush of Zach's breathing.

He spills messily onto Zach's stomach and the remains of his already ruined shirt, gasping into the humid space behind Zach's ear with a thready series of 'ah's that feel suddenly, embarrassingly intimate as the tense flood of heat stinging him up recedes like low tide.

A cramp Chris seriously hadn't noticed a minute ago pipes up in his left calf as he's rolling off of Zach. It leaves him flopped haphazardly with one of Zach's legs still trapped between his and cooling come smearing from his shirt onto his stomach and the duvet.

He's pretty sure he couldn't have picked a duvet out of a lineup before he met Zach.

It takes a minute, but the ache of his shoulder from the awkward position it's trapped in thanks to the goddamn handcuffs starts to overtake the dwindling pain in his leg. He's still not feeling especially energetic when it comes to doing anything about that, though, so he settles for wagging his wrist enough to rattle the cuffs and ignores how his fingers feel cold where Zach's aren't wound between them anymore. It's probably just the loss of circulation.

"We've got to get out of these things." His voice sounds sluggish to his own ears, but it's still more eloquent than the grunt Zach tosses back at him.

Chris lays there for a while longer, watching Zach watch the ceiling like it's hiding state secrets from him until his arm officially goes numb. Not the best plan considering now he’s got to haul the dead weight of it around while he gropes at the floor over the edge of the bed in the vain hope that Zach's lockpick will spontaneously jump into the path of his hand. That doesn't pan out so well either.

He's just flinging a leg out to join the search party when Zach leans up on an elbow, slim metal pick gleaming in his free hand.

"How did you-"

Zach lifts an unimpressed eyebrow at him. "Unlike some people, I can hold on to my equipment."

He sets in on the cuffs with a flurry of clicking steel, only to stop a few seconds later when he finally notices the laugh that Chris has trapped behind the tight clench of his lips.

"An ‘equipment’ joke? Really? You're a twelve-year-old, Christopher."

That's enough to smack the good mood right out of Chris' head. Not the insult; verbal sparring is the highest known measure of Zach's affection; it's the people he’s polite to that he really hates. But _Christopher_. Because that's Chris' name, his real one, the one he gave Zach that first day during a big-ticket bounty run gone pear-shaped that Zach was, obviously now, his competition on. Blew his whole damn cover out of the water because he couldn't actually remember it for a second when he shoved Zach into an alcove, out of the line of fire, and found those big brown eyes looking at him like…

Like Chris was a mark, clearly. Just another dumb tourist caught in the crossfire, who happened to have a nice enough ass to make lying to him worth Zach's while. Certainly not anyone who would ever warrant knowing anything real about Zach.

The cuffs flick open with an underwhelmingly quiet metallic sigh.

Chris does swing a leg over the edge of the bed this time, putting his back enough to Zach to feel slightly less exposed as he tucks his sticky cock back in. "You have an exit strategy?"

His wrist is throbbing now under the pins and needles of feeling returning to his arm. The skin's all pinked up, raw red and purple around the knob of bone. Scrubbing his other hand around it doesn't do anything but make the pain flare, but that's not going to stop Chris from doing it. He's always had a talent for poking at his own wounds.

Zach's kneeling on the mattress with one cuff still dangling from his forearm, looking like he got dragged through a warzone and a porno all in one day. Not entirely inaccurate, really.

Chris doesn't dare look him in the eyes. Those damn things were what screwed him over in the first place.

"I," Zach pauses like maybe he just thought better of whatever the end of that sentence was going to be. It's weird. The Zach Chris knows doesn't second-guess himself. Then again, the Zach Chris knows doesn't exist. "I have some contingencies set up."

A paper cut itch, the question sits on the tip of Chris’ tongue – whether any of those contingencies were built for two. If Zach ever saw a future where everything fell apart and still imagined taking Chris with him.

Not knowing is better, he tells himself. Better than being positive that the answer is no.

“We’re less conspicuous separately,” he says instead. Five minutes ago he was creaming Zach’s abs. How the hell is this his life?

“True,” Zach agrees on the heels of a small, harsh breath.

He finishes unfastening the cuffs, leaving them in a gleaming puddle amongst the rumpled bedclothes and conspicuous stains. Any other time Chris would probably feel at least a little bad about that.

“It wasn’t fake for me.”

The second it comes barreling out of Chris’ mouth, he knows it was too honest. In this profession, this life, honesty’s the anti-kevlar, the weapon that’ll take you down faster than any trigger pull. Chris knew the score years ago when he signed on for this, and honesty has never been a part of it.

Zach looks sincerely insulted about it, though. “You think it was for me?”

He’s climbing off the bed, more smoothly than Chris could ever dream of doing, eyebrows hunkered down so far his eyes are just angry slits. Everything about his posture is a fight waiting to happen and Chris just feels like that time after the Colombian consulate – too damn tired to even try anymore.

“How the hell should I know?” he shrugs. Twists his mouth into a halfhearted approximation of a smile and thanks his lucky stars that he spots the .32 peeking out from the corner of the bed. Fetching it at least gives him an excuse not to look at Zach anymore.

He’s expecting Zach to be hovering there when he stands up, a spare inch behind him, because all evidence to the contrary, Chris is actually good at his job and he can damn well tell when somebody pushes their way into his personal space.

What he’s not expecting is for Zach to say, “I threatened the coffee twink.”

It’s far enough out of left field to cut through the accepting sort of lethargy Chris had just started to settle into. He can admit it bears a striking resemblance to depression. “Who?”

He shoots a look over his shoulder only to find Zach rolling his eyes. “From the place. With the hair.”

“Anton?”

This time Zach snorts, all glare and gloom as he crosses his arms over his chest. His mostly bare, come-covered… not the time. “See? You knew exactly who I was talking about it.”

It’s not precisely a new argument, even if the Anton factor is fresh out of the package. Zach, despite being a hot piece of ass in his own right, is a possessive bastard. There are plenty of times it’s annoying as hell, but Chris can’t deny that he’s always found it a little flattering, too. More than one of his go-to spank bank memories is of Zach deciding he needed to prove exactly who Chris was going home with, right then and there.

But still.

“He’s a kid!”

“He gives you free espresso shots,” Zach counters, closing the space Chris makes by trying to side-step around him. “Nobody knows better than me that the way to your heart is through caffeine.”

“Funny, I don’t remember a lot of coffee being involved in our courtship.” Strictly speaking, they’re standing too close together considering they were just in the process of hashing out their… well, not divorce, seeing as he’s not really sure about the technical legality of their marriage to begin with, but the dissolution of their relationship.

There’s definitely too much smiling.

“We did a lot of things wrong the first time around.”

And flirting. Way too much flirting.

“Implying that there will be a second.”

Chris is willing to accept that he may be partially to blame for the flirting. The sad, hurt, pleading flirting. God, he’s so much less pathetic than this with everyone who isn’t Zach.

There’s not that much in the way of height difference between them; Zach’s taller, but only by a fraction. So when Zach takes that last tiny step forward and presses them together, they fit like a matched set, hips and chests and cheeks slotting into place.

“We’re less conspicuous separately.” Chris can’t tell what that was meant to be, if Zach was aiming for snide and came up hopeful or if he’s trying to convince himself of a truth they both know is as certain as gravity.

He goes ahead and plays his part, regardless. Fights the urge to memorize this in case it’s the last time he ever gets to feel it. Tries not to sound cracked open and bleeding out. “True.”

And then Zach is stepping away, this hollow ache in Chris’ chest filling up with the same chilled air that floods between them. He’s pretty sure he would have noticed if Zach had actually scooped Chris’ heart out and carried it with him, but the heel of his palm starts kneading at the bruise from Zach’s shoulder on his sternum anyway like that’ll prove it.

Only Zach stops again, one giant step back, and sticks out his hand, “Zachary John Quinto.”

Chris takes in how rock-steady Zach's hand is, not even a hint of a tremble despite the fierce, familiar determination on his face that reads 'scared' to Chris, clear as day. 

He blurts the first thing that comes to mind, which, stupidly, turns out to be, “You’re Spanish?”

Zach's mouth twitches like it's giving some serious consideration to another smile, but holding back.

“Italian, on my dad’s side.” There's something tentative and very un-Zach in his voice that tags Chris in the stomach and burrows deep. Crawls warm and noon-bright through his veins when Zach flicks a look down at his own hand and then Chris' where he's idly gripping the gun; thick fanned lashes and dark persuasive eyes and-

Oh, damn him. Really, seriously damn him and his stupid, siren eyes.

Tucking the gun back into his waistband, Chris snags Zach's hand. Squeezes tight and doesn't ignore the burn when Zach's fingers brush his abused wrist so much as he revels in it. 

“Glad to meet you.”


End file.
